30 AMERICAN LITERATURE
periences in diction pure and elevated, differ-
ent indeed from the hard phrases of his theo-
logical discourses. This mood is in him, too,
as he writes of Sarah Pierpont, "the young
lady in New Haven", later his wife, who
will sometime go about from place to place, sing-
ing sweetly . . , and no one knows for what. She
loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves,
and seems to have someone invisible always con-
versing with her*
In brief, in the thirty-six works of Edwards
and in his life appear most of the Puritan
characteristics discussed in this chapter, in-
cluding even the minor trait of thrift, shown
in his recently published letters concerning
the sale of wool. More than any other Ameri-
can figure before 1800 he represents, also, the
subordination of literary and artistic qualities,
so evident in his Treatise Concerning the
Religious Affections (1746) and in his Diary
and Resolutions, to religion. Even in the
pitiful waste of his great talents as missionary
to the Indians we perceive a characteristic
New England attitude toward the frontier,
in contrast to that of Virginia. The frontier
was to have its day, but this chapter has
shown, I hope, that during this first century
and a half the shaping force in American
literature was that strange composite of
trader, warrior, and divine, the New England
Puritan.